1) The bison herd on Konza Prairie has begun to show a genetic defect. Some of the males have a condition known as "rabbit hock" in which the knee of the back leg is malformed slightly. The gene controlling this trait is located on the X chromosome and is recessive.
a. What type of inheritance is “rabbit hock”?

b. Create a Punnett Square between the herd bull (the dominant one which does most of the breeding) who is normal (XN) mates with a cow that is a carrier for rabbit hock.

c. What are the genotypic and phenotypic ratios?

d. A game and parks worker notices that a newborn female exhibits “rabbit hock”. Is it possible for the herd bull to have fathered this newborn? Why?

Some disease gets passed from parents to offspring by sex-linked inheritance in which the allele for the disease is located on the sex chromosomes and gets transferred during reproduction.

a. Rabbit hock is a sex-linked recessive disease as it is located on the sex chromosome and is a recessive allele.

b. See the attached image below for the Punnett square. The cross is between normal bull and carrier cow for rabbit hock.

Bull will have an [tex]\text{X}^{\text{N}}[/tex] chromosome and the other sex chromosome will be Y. Cow is a carrier and has recessive gene as well it will be [tex]\text{X}^{\text{N}}\text{X}^{\text{n}}[/tex].

[tex]\text{X}^{\text{N}}\text{Y}[/tex] = Normal bull

[tex]\text{X}^{\text{n}}\text{X}^{\text{n}}[/tex] = Carrier cow

c. The genotypic ratio is the ratio that is visible in genes while phenotypic is the characteristics that are visible in physical attributes.

Genotypic ratio = carrier: normal offspring: diseased= 1 : 2 : 1

Phenotypic ratio = 3 : 1

d. It is possible for the bull to father the female newborn with rabbit hock diseases if the father carries [tex]\text{X}^{\text{N}}\text{Y}[/tex] genotype and the cow have [tex]\text{X}^{\text{N}}\text{X}^{\text{n}}[/tex]. Then there is a 25% chance that the female might be diseased.

To learn more about X linked recessive diseases follow the link:

https://brainly.com/question/11203546